We got wind of the fact that IBM, arguably the world’s most robotically advanced procurement team, is focussing on its employees’ soft skills.

As Justin Mcbryan, Learning & Development, Strategy, Communications Manager- IBM, explained, why would IBM need a high volume of data scientists in their midst when they have Watson!?

Technological advancements will soon permit the automation of our processes; handling the sourcing and the market intelligence. In this environment, it’s the softer skills procurement professionals must master to ensure a long-term career. That’s the real skills gap procurement should be worried about!

Ahead of next week’s webinar Beat The Bots – How Being Human Will Win The Day, we outline the specific skills procurement pros should be mastering to prepare for the post-cognitive age, with the help of Justin and our second webinar speaker John Viner Smith, Principal-Mercer.

1. Design Thinking

There are some “incredible and transformative technologies that offer solutions to problems that were unimaginable just a few years ago ,but they’re just half of the puzzle.” begins John.

“Subject matter experts will have a role to play in framing [these problems] in the most efficient way.” It’s important that the solutions aren’t simply “sticking plasters but fundamental root cause fixes”.

This is a role for procurement’s best and brightest, and the skill needed to fulfil this role is Design Thinking; “the process of being at the forefront of bringing new technologies to bear on business problems.”

2. Thinking at the speed of digital!

Joh asserted that procurement must recognise that “thinking of digital solutions requires some understanding of new processes and ways of thinking.”

“Procurement people should be learning about methodologies like Google’s Design Sprint or Eric Ries’ concept of Intrapreneurship as defined in the Lean Startup that are used in other types of digital business.

“Too often procurement thinking is slow, bound in process and incredibly risk averse. Technology problem solving is experimental, iterative and views failures as key to learning. The idea of developing hypotheses, testing them, failing fast and iterating or pivoting in the course of a week, as per Google’s Sprint methods, would be alien to many Procurement people.”

Procurement has worked at a certain pace, thus far. And it’s going to have to get faster!

3. Active questioning and listening

This wouldn’t be a piece about soft skills without a mention of communication! We already know how important this skill is for procurement people but it’s going to be all the more valuable in a post-cognivite age.

Justin reminded us that communication is vital for everything “from presentation skills to phone etiquette and how to ask probing questions to your suppliers.”

In a post cognitive world you’re “going to become more of an owner and less of a process facilitator” asserts Justin, which is where active listening comes in.

When it comes to managing negotiations with suppliers, clients and colleagues, “We all have scripts e.g. How many widgets do you need, when do you need them by etc.”

“Every now and then, you’ll have been in a situation where a client has given a little bit more than you asked for. This is where the active [and critical] listening comes in.” How do you use that information to do the best job possible?

4. Negotiation

“We rely on the threat of competitive pressure to do our negotiating for us” says John.

“We source the spec and don’t always listen to challenges from Suppliers. When we’re engaging them to help solve complex problems, we will need to be more commercially empowered and highly skilled negotiators; able to get the best from our suppliers by offering the best of ourselves while optimising value.”

5. Imagination

“The future role of procurement can be solved in one phrase: problem solving” says John.

But procurement’s problem solving needs to take on a more innovative and imaginative approach.

“Not every situation is going to call for an RFX” explains Justin. “That speaks directly to the change we’re looking for [at IBM].” Too often “we see a need and our reaction from a process point is let’s go and do the RFX.” Instead professionals “should take a deep breath and start understanding the client and exactly what they need,” and approach the problem in alternate ways.

John concedes, arguing that “running tender might be the solution (increasingly rarely!) but collaborative innovation with the suppliers we have is important.”

Procurement peoples’ jobs will largely focus on bringing innovation to the supply chain in the first place and really helping the business to understand their demand.

In short, Procurement needs to have a relationship with the organisation that is much more strategic and puts the function in a partnering and consultative role. As Justin sums up, ‘ [at IBM] We’re still looking for the procurement experts, we’re still looking for people who can do the job. But we’re adding to the soft skills portfolio.”

Shifting business landscapes, a relentless focus on cost reduction and the intensification of competition to even retain, much less grow the customer base, means every opportunity to optimise needs to be explored.

For many robotics and robotics processes, automation is the starting point. To unlock full and sustainable value, organisations need to look beyond a point solution approach. Re-imagining the way the organisation operates at its core and using technology to enable new ways of working is what cognitive process automation is really about and that is how the magic can really start to happen.

You really do need a strategy

Identifying a potential process and even deploying a robot, can be done very quickly. In the absence of a strategy however, many organisations are often faced with the question of how they actually measure the value. Are the benefits real? Why am I not seeing the impact in my downstream metrics and performance? Once answered, the next discrete process component should be how and where to deploy robotics at scale to drive the business outcomes that impact the company performance.

Having a strategy is a fundamental building block. It enables the agenda to be defined, set and consistently reinforced. It becomes the reference point for what, how and why things are being done and this shift is what elevates the automation opportunity beyond simple cost take-out. A robust strategy should articulate how process automation (robotics + cognitive computing) can drive strategic growth, optimisation of the customer experience and enhanced employee engagement. It’s a formula for significant and sustained benefits and more importantly, they can be captured quickly.

Even virtual systems can cast a shadow

The idea that technology on its own is all that is needed often leads organisations to failing to consider the impact on people and processes. Legacy systems and functions set up to support them, and often work around them, means the people and process component are intrinsically linked.

Organisations need to fundamentally rethink their current operating models and envisage the framework they need to put in place to enable automation of business processes. In the cognitive computing world, business processes can be reconfigured in minutes not months. When this is not done, the ‘shadow’ organisation emerges. People and processes remain the same, or even more disappointingly, grow in complexity to accommodate the technology that has been implemented.

Where does cognitive computing fit in?

In the automation agenda, cognitive computing can unlock new sources of value. Insight driven decision making becomes the way of doing business and simulation capability enables testing of ideas and hypotheses quickly for agility. For one client, this means 50M+ calculations in under 10 sec.

Adding natural language processing and the ability to leverage data that has never been used before from unstructured data sources becomes the way of doing business. Robots adjust and adapt using cognitive self-learning capabilities.

And what does this mean for people? Talent is key enabler of organisational value and in the world of cognitive process automation, it’s all about enabling people to focus on high value work. The relationship between people and machine becomes one of continuous learning from one another, enhancing the work that people do. People + Process + Technology; it’s a formula for competitive advantage.

This article was written by Alice Sidhu – Partner, Digital and Cognitive Business Transformation, IBM.

Join us LIVE at The Big Ideas Summit Melbourne to discuss the big-ticket trends affecting procurement – grab a ticket here to secure your seat!

We’ve had quite enough of the scare-mongering out there that says the robots are coming to steal our jobs! We’ve got some inside info that suggests having a human touch in your procurement team is by far the most important thing!

By 2020 all of our important procurement decisions will be made with the assistance of artificial intelligence. We know that our teams must “transform or die” if we don’t want the function reduced to the back office, facing extinction.

Given the scare mongering and hype around AI, most procurement professionals have accepted that they must map out their cognitive journeys, hone their skills and prepare for a very different future.

But what does that future look like? Are procurement teams of the future made up entirely of savvy data scientists? Can you even have a future in procurement if you’re not a data whizz?

Can you beat the bots with the human touch?

Our latest webinar, in partnership with IBM, takes the more optimistic, and realistic, approach that humans can, and will, win the day!

The idea that everyone needs to be a data scientist is a total fallacy. In reality, only a very small percentage of the workplace actually needs these skills. The rest of the procurement workforce will need to be managing relationships with the supply chain ecosystem.

If cognitive technology like IBM’s Watson can handle the sourcing, the market intelligence and the data, the biggest gap for procurement to worry about is soft skills.

Beat The Bots: How Being Human Will Win The Day examines how procurement’s role is transforming. We explore why the function needs to develop arelationship with the organisation that is much more strategic, placing it in a partnering and consultative role.

Think you could do with learning more about the importance of soft skills in the cognitive age, and which ones you should be concentrating on within your teams? Sign up for our webinar on 24th October and check out our FAQs below for all the information you require:

What content can I expect from the webinar?

We’ll be discussing:

What cognitive tools are on the horizon?

How will the advancement of cognitive technology be an enabler, and not the disabler, of your procurement career?

Why is the most robotically advanced procurement team in the world, focusing on their employees soft skills?

How can procurement teams map out their cognitive and talent journeys alongside each other?

If soft skills are king, which ones should you be developing?

Who are the guest speakers?

Tania Seary – Founder, Procurious

A true procurement entrepreneur, Tania is the Founding Chairman of Procurious, The Faculty and The Source. Throughout her career, Tania has been wholly committed to raising the profile of the procurement profession and connecting its leaders.

After finishing her MBA at Pennsylvania State University, Tania became one of Alcoa’s first global commodity managers.

In 2016, Tania was recognised by IBM as a #NewWaytoEngage Futurist and named “Influencer of the Year” by Supply Chain Dive. She hosts regular procurement webinars, and presents at high-profile events around the world.

John Viner-Smith – Principal, Mercer

John earned his masters in international procurement from Kedge Business School in Bordeaux in 2003 and went to work at JPMorgan Chase as HR Sourcing Manager for EMEA.

After a couple of years at JPM he moved into consulting with ATKearney, specialising in Procurement work and stayed in Consulting until 2009 (he moved to Deloitte) until moving back into industry with Dixons Stores Group, where he was Senior Category Manager for Marketing and IT.

After that he spent two years as a Principal at KPMG in Shared Services and Outsourcing Advisory, where he became involved in work around Robotic Process Automation and Cognitive Computing in Shared Services environments before moving to Mercer to focus on a commercial excellence again.

He writes and lectures in leading business schools on the topic of Commercial Negotiation. John currently live in Oxfordshire with his wife and two children.

Justin has 20 years of Supply Chain experience and currently serves as IBM Procurements Learning & Development and Strategy Leader at IBM.

He has most recently been a Supply Chain Consultant for IBM specialising in logistics and procurement across numerous Industry verticals around the globe, including extended work in China, Mexico, Canada and Europe.

Justin’s passion for learning and development stems from his desire to collaborate and scale expertise through large organizations. Justin is a proud graduate of Loyola University-New Orleans and currently resides in New York City with his wife.

I’m already a member of Procurious, do I still need to register?

Yes! If you are already a member of Procurious you must still register to access the webinar via this platform. We’ll send you a confirmation email with a link to the webinar platform and a handy reminder one hour before we go live!

When is it taking place?

The webinar will take place at 1pm BST on 24th October 2017

Help! I can’t make it to the live-stream

No problem! If you can’t make the live-stream you can catch up whenever it suits you. We’ll be making it available on Procurious soon after the event (and will be sure to send you a link) so you can listen at your leisure!

Can I ask a question?

If you’re listening live, our speakers would love to hear your questions and we’d love for you to pick their brains . Questions can be submitted throughout the live stream via the webinar platform, or via Twitter when you tag #Beatthebots @procurious_

If you think of a brilliant question after the event, feel free to submit your question via the Discussion Board on Procurious and we’ll do our very best to ensure it gets answered for you.

Experts around the globe tracked the terrifying advance of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma earlier this month, plotting and estimating the potential damage to life and property as the monster storms approached the U.S. mainland. Can the deployment of cognitive AI lead to more accurate predictions and better risk management?

IBM’s global supply chain has been acknowledged as one of the world’s most complex. With scale and complexity come increased risk, but the Global Procurement team has it covered with its award-winning risk program augmented by the remarkable abilities of the Watson Cognitive Platform.

Even Watson, however, appreciates some assistance when it comes to risk mitigation, which is why IBM has partnered with an e2e cloud risk service provider named Resilinc. With this new capability, the team provides a composite risk score for every one of IBM’s suppliers based on six risk dimensions – financial, location, recovery, operations, resiliency and sourcing.

The three overall risks that the team has built its mitigation strategy around are:

Loss of supply continuity

The fallout from a supply continuity problem are well-known – missed deliveries, plummeting customer satisfaction and lost revenue. IBM’s risk program is therefore designed to protect supply continuity by monitoring and providing real-time alerts on man-made risks, natural forces or climatic threats, along with financial and economic risks.

Nothing illustrates the disruptive potential of a risk event so much as the recent Hurricanes Harvey and Irma. To demonstrate how Watson can augment risk-management ahead of hurricanes and other crises, the team at IBM shared with Procurious the ways in which Watson’s cognitive capabilities were used to track and provide unique insight into Hurricane Patricia back in 2015 – an approach which contributed to IBM picking up a major award for Risk Management at Procurement Leader’s World Procurement Awards.

Using feeds including The Weather Company and the US Navy Weather database, Watson tracked the storm’s velocity, size, category, intensity and simulated scenarios of possible storm tracks. Interestingly, Watson also engaged in “social listening”, picking up local sentiment by tracking Twitter and other social media platforms. At the same time, Watson alerted IBM about every 1st and 2nd-tier supplier in the storms’ possible tracks.

Once the Risk and Supply Assurance teams had the earliest possible indication of Patricia’s potential impact, mitigation plans (such as closing at-risk plants) were readied for deployment.

Reputational damage

IBM’s Conflict Minerals Team must be very well-travelled. From Dubai to China, Indonesia to Vietnam, they’ve conducted on-site visits with smelters and refiners to an impressive 10 levels deep in the supply chain, working with them to certify that they are using minerals controlled by responsible sources.

Every supplier must sign the Electronics Industry Citizenship Coalition (EICC) code of conduct, which IBM has adapted as the single code across its supply base. It establishes standards regarding safe working conditions, fair and dignified treatment of workers, and environmentally responsible and ethical operations. To this end, IBM has conducted +2000 3rd-party audits across 34 countries.

Regulatory noncompliance

Although noncompliance isn’t as exciting as a hurricane tearing through suppliers’ facilities, the impacts can still be dramatic. Noncompliance can result in fines and penalties, product impoundment, revenue reversal and adverse press.

IBM’s Global Procurement Environmental Compliance team ensures all products comply with environmental directives, laws, regulations and standards; made incredibly complex by the global nature of the organisation. The team tracks changes in regulations, such as eco-design or restrictions of certain chemicals, then determines if the change will affect IBM products and plots a path to compliance accordingly.

Risk and Reward

IBM Global Procurement’s efforts in risk mitigation were recently celebrated at Procurement Leader’s World Procurement Awards, where the team won a major award for Risk Mitigation, and a second award for its transformation program.

Procurious is working with our Knowledge Partner, IBM, over the next 12 months to promote cognitive procurement to our global community. To learn more about IBM Global Procurement, click here.

Don’t let yourself be overwhelmed by the magnitude and potential of cognitive technology. The greatest journeys start with that all-important first step and, when it comes to AI, you just need to get started!

We’re live from the Big Ideas Summit Chicago! Register now as a digital delegate to follow all of the day’s action!

There’s a lot of buzz around how ready our industry is to start using some of the newest cognitive technologies. But the time really is now for CPOs and procurement organisations to put a stake in the ground on where they want to go in the future with regards to digital and cognitive capabilities, to put the roadmap in place for how they want to get there.

Outing the analog!– Many procurement teams are still working in a reactive and transactional world without digitised processes to automate transactions.

Powering the marketplaces!– From Graham’s experience, he sees very little in the way of supplier catalogs and automation driven from those catalogs. “In a digital world we should be leveraging marketplaces – ensuring we make content available to all of the users so they can find what they need, click on it, and drop it in their shopping basket easily.

Predicting demand – Current practice is to look at the spend information from historical data in order to make decisions. Nowadays, there are ways to anticipate and predict demand so procurement can look forward, instead of back.

High value contribution – Lack of digitisation and lack of insight means that key personnel in strategic sourcing and category management are not able to focus on stakeholder management, interaction with the user, and negotiations with the supplier

4 cognitive tools you can use…NOW!

But in spite of these challenges, and whether you like it or not, cognitive technology is coming to change the world.

Not everyone will be ready to jump into the cognitive capabilities. But it’s not an all-or-nothing proposition; you can plug in cognitive at any step. Many of these tools are proven and in use through IBM Procurement today and are being prepared for a broader market. Graham took us through four of these cognitive tools.

Supply Chain Risk Insightscognitive solution fetches unstructured data from social media and creates alerts ahead of time for category managers who can take preventive action to reduce or eliminate impact from such challenges. Effective demand forecasting and proactive risk management is critical to a responsive and cost effective supply chain.

SupplierIQcombines data gleaned through unstructured sources (e.g. social media, news feeds, competitor websites, corporate social platforms, blogs and forums etc.) and contrasts that with other data sources to generate insights that were earlier not accessible. A category manager could actually stumble upon a new supplier for a category that was not being considered; or actually drop an existing supplier because of the potential risk an existing supplier by connecting performance with market information.

PricingIQ can save category managers millions of dollars by tracking contract prices in contrast with dynamic market prices rather than sticking to contract prices that are struck for a number of years. This tool allows IBM Procurement Services category managers an additional 3 – 10 per cent in savings in key spend categories over and beyond what’s already been saved. Pricing IQ was awarded Most Innovative Use of Technology by CIPS in 2017.

Cognitive Buying Assistant(CBA) drives user adoption and spend under management and ease of use. IBM are designing superior user experience by applying cognitive tools on a mobile app that can recommend most relevant items to buy based on user profile, usage patterns as well as sentiment analysis gleamed out of feedback from other users. Ordering something in your professional capacity will soon be as easy as ordering products in your personal life. This is a critical driver of user adoption since a better buying experience will lead to better compliance and better savings for the user and business.

Your path to cognitive

Everyone’s roadmap will be different and every procurement organisation comes into this maturity scale at different points. Where some larger procurement teams are already embracing technologies like Blockchain and Dynamic Marketplaces, others are not quite there.

If you’re of the latter group, start by asking yourself how you can get more out of the data you’re sitting on. How can you gain better insights and advanced analytics from all the spend and transactional data that flows through procurement?

Lastly, consider whether you have the right talent to help you along on your journey.

With more robust data and insights, the more you will free up your people to do what they are meant to do!

Live From The Big Ideas Summit

Want to hear more from IBM’s Graham Wright? On 28th September, Procurious is bringing The Big Ideas Summit to Chicago. Register now (It’s FREE!) as a digital delegate to gain access to all of the day’s action and LIVE video from our speakers and attendees.

If the job of a procurement department is to provide a service to the enterprise, then shouldn’t procurement folks be investing the majority of our time focusing on the experience of our business stakeholders and our supplier partners?

I think we should, but all too often what I see is the majority of procurement work hours being dedicated to spreadsheets focused on little more than unit prices, discount levels, rate cards and blocked invoices.

C’mon folks. We can do better than that!

Who has the time to be “customer-focussed”?

I’m not suggesting we ‘go nuts’ and forget about delivering bottom line savings to the corporation. I do, however, think that we will get more frequent opportunities to save, and more partnership on ways to save while driving mutual benefit, if we focus a bit more of our attention on our customers and suppliers and the experience they have when they choose to partner with us.

But who has the time?!

Certainly very few of us find ourselves burdened with surplus free time. We can’t add hours to the day but we can subtract time draining tasks that crowd out the good stuff.

Procurement practitioners require access to vast amounts of information to effectively manage spend. The data is often spread across a myriad disparate sources and often times the process of gathering and reviewing that information leaves little time for focusing on the experience of suppliers and stakeholders.

If you’re like me, you were probably some combination of bored, frustrated, and defeated by the end of that list and that list could have easily filled the rest of a page.

Why is digitisation so important?

There’s a lot of ‘stuff’ to consider. This is why digitisation is so very important for procurement. Getting the data off paper and into formats where it is visible and reachable is extremely important. This makes it much easier to collect, validate, coordinate, enrich and connect that data so that ‘whole pictures’ of the procurement process can start to come into focus. There is an abundance of amazing tools available to help streamline and automate procurement processes and the capabilities are growing by leaps.

Digitising the data and process is one of the most important keys to unlocking the value that these capabilities will deliver, and procurement organisations that get this foundational element right will have a substantial head start on delivering real value to their organisations.

Ask yourself a few basic questions on supplier information, sourcing process, or supply market dynamics. If you find that the answers to the questions require multiple system searches or spreadsheets it’s probably time to start a conversation about taking your procurement function fully digital. The investments you make in getting this right will pay you back with (among many other things) more time to spend building lasting relationships and great experiences for your stakeholders and suppliers. And those experiences will keep them coming back.

On 28th September, Procurious is bringing The Big Ideas Summit to Chicago. Register now (It’s FREE!) as a digital delegate to gain access to all of the day’s action and LIVE video from our speakers and attendees.

With less than two weeks to go until we launch The Big Ideas Summit in Chicago, we thought we’d have a quick catch up with some of our keynote speakers to discover what makes them tick, where they see the procurement function heading in the near future and how they would reflect on their successful careers.

But today, we want to know what makes him excited about his work, what he wishes he’d known at 20 years old, and the key skills he’s looking for in a killer team.

How do you stay relevant in a world of fast-paced innovation?

Firstly, client interaction. This gives you exposure to a huge variety of approaches by industry, country and company to innovation. You have to remain selective.

Secondly, you cannot read everything. Instead, take the time to focus on the few key areas you want to learn about.

Thirdly, make time to network and engage through all types of media and professional and industry associations to get the information and bounce ideas to ensure you have learnt and can develop your points of view.

Finally, take the time to think !

What makes you excited to go to work on a Monday morning?

Desire to win.

Clients, my team and the engagements.

Excitement of driving an agenda through IBM that can truly change the world through data, the next natural resource.

What skills and talents contribute to an all-round, great team?

An enquiring, questioning mind with the ability to apply innovative, design thinking.

Passion and drive for the business, profession and self.

What 3 attributes make a great leader?

Confidence to lead and use multiple styles.

Being a good listener and a coach.

Communicator with the strength to give “Straight Talk”

What do you know now that you wish you’d known when you were 20?

Time goes very quickly. Have a plan and follow your dreams. Experience as much as you can.

All those successful Internet Stocks !

The benefit of exercise and healthy balance.

Want to hear more from Graham? On 28th September, Procurious is bringing The Big Ideas Summit to Chicago. Register now (It’s FREE!) as a digital delegate to gain access to all of the day’s action and LIVE video from our speakers and attendees.

Shockingly, 60 per cent of CPOs believe their teams do not have the skills to deliver their procurement strategy, according to Deloitte’s “Global Chief Procurement Officer Survey 2017.”

Why are procurement teams falling so short?

Originally, procurement was heavily based on process management, negotiation and basic spend analysis. But the procurement function is evolving, and professionals have to adapt to a new environment . There are new and growing expectations that require alternate skills for a more advanced job profile.

Procurement professionals are expected to be much more analytical, with the ability to perform data mining. They also must learn to manipulate and understand financial data and indicators, such as P&L and balance sheets. That’s not to mention that they should be proficient with the latest technologies.

Yet, one of the most important skills to develop is customer centricity. In today’s customer-centric world, this becomes crucial.

In my opinion, understanding internal customers, being able to communicate in their language, knowing what they want or helping them to understand what they need, is the most difficult skill to learn and develop because it often goes against the conventional and traditional training that many procurement professionals have received.

It’s time to stop hiding behind the processes and get to know the internal customers! Given the back-office environment we are coming from, there is still a lot to do to change the mind-set and the behaviour of those involved. Procurement professionals need to develop their consultative skills and become less process focused, since excessive process significantly impedes speed and agility.

Keeping It Fresh

Another challenge for procurement involves attracting and retaining fresh talent in our industry. This situation needs to be addressed now to prevent a significant skills gap within the next couple of years. While we still have to continue to build traditional procurement skills. We also need to recognise that these skills must evolve as analytic and cognitive solutions provide more refined data and insight. The challenge is less about finding someone who is an expert negotiator and more about recruiting someone who understands data and logic.

At IBM, we are currently hiring maths and statistics majors because they can understand trends and probabilities. Although many procurement skills can be taught, it’s hard to train someone to find trends in complex data.

Taking IBM’s example, our strategy to recruit and retain talent is reflected in how we communicate our procurement roles. “Our Procurement strategy is about collaborating with customers to ensure they have best in-class solutions, with access to the most advanced technology available on mobile devices. We partner with our suppliers to be as innovative and creative as possible.”

Presented like this, a job in procurement sounds pretty exciting!

The party ain’t over yet!

And the party isn’t over once we’ve found the right skills and talent, we also need to keep that skilled staff within the procurement function! If we help employees build on their competencies as well as add new ones, and if they can see that their contribution to the company’s mission clearly makes a difference, it will help us to keep those employees in procurement.

Ultimately, modernising the procurement profession and making procurement a “cool” place to work will help retain a talented, skilled and motivated workforce.

On 28th September, Procurious is bringing The Big Ideas Summit to Chicago. Register now (It’s FREE!) as a digital delegate to gain access to all of the day’s action.

Transformation has become the new norm as organisations respond to an onslaught of shocks. But is there a best-practice way to go about transforming a procurement function? We interviewed Procurious Partner, IBM Global Procurement, to discover why they’ve been recognised on the global stage for their approach to the challenge.

If you were to stop any procurement professional on the street and ask what their function is currently up to, you’re unlikely to hear the reply, “Oh, you know – business as usual”. Instead, you can expect to hear a description of some sort of transformation. Whether it’s enterprise-wide or procurement-led, everybody’s doing it. In fact, you could argue that the process of transformation itself has become business as usual, especially if you’ve ever worked in a company where one transformation follows another, ad nauseum.

Where once your organisation may have needed to reinvent itself every few decades, today, an onslaught of shocks – technological, cultural, economic, and regulatory – is forcing companies to transform every few years. Five to ten years ago, your CEO might have become a business icon through a single transformation. The minimum requirement now is being able to execute multiple transformations, while success today is measured in your ability to foster a culture of continuous reinvention.

Showing how it’s done

IBM Global Procurement recognised the need to transform as market dynamics put increased pressure on its customers, which consist of internal IBM business units and external clients. Graham Wright, Vice President, Global Procurement and IBM Procurement Services, described some of these pressures. “We realised that our internal and external clients needed less complexity, more transparency, consistent processes executed with speed, and new solutions. The challenge was to find new ways to stay relevant and be successful – that’s why we launched a radical transformation not only to address the needs of the business but to keep pace with smaller, more agile competition and remain an industry leader”.

The team went about this by ramping up activity across three key areas:

The team unlocked the value of supplier innovation by implementing a state-of-the-art Supplier Enabled Innovation (SEI) program and using new, engaging tools, including cognition. The SEI initiative included 3rd-party ‘Voice of the Supplier’ surveys, supplier incentives including annual awards, and clear performance metrics.

2. Engagement: Delivering simple, engaging user experiences.

After identifying key client pain points around complexity, slow execution and delayed problem resolution, IBM Global Procurement followed a mantra of speed and simplicity to improve visibility, enhance workflows and reduce cycle times. Innovative engagement solutions, such as an “Ask Procurement” chat function for clients, have contributed to an impressive improvement in client satisfaction. The chat application is highly intuitive – it suggests self-service solutions for users, and provides direct access to live agents who can answer questions simply and quickly.

No mention of IBM Global Procurement would be complete without a reference to its not-so-secret weapon – the Watson Cognitive Platform. Through catalog data enrichment and cognitive procurement solutions which provide users with refined real-time data for risk mitigation, market and supplier insights, pricing information and recommendations, the team realised significant efficiencies including hand-free POs and greatly improved process compliance.

As an extremely positive side-effect of this transformational effort, Wright reports that the team’s efforts are being recognised within the wider organisation. “The transformation has helped change the perception of procurement evolving from a cost centre to a value centre.”

While internal recognition of the procurement team’s value is gratifying, the Global Procurement Team was even more delighted to see their efforts celebrated at Procurement Leader’s World Procurement Awards, where the team won the award for “Transforming External Partnerships (Pioneering Business Impact)”. The team’s submission went through a rigorous 3-stage judging process including online judging, peer review and a face-to-face regional debate.

And that’s not all – amongst 350 submissions across 15 categories, IBM Procurement was short-listed for each of the 6 entries it entered a submission for, and picked up 2 major awards – the Transformation award, and another for Risk Mitigation.

Procurious is working with our Knowledge Partner, IBM, over the next 12 months to promote cognitive procurement to our global community. To learn more about IBM Global Procurement, click here.

Procurement today needs to be about insights and intelligence. Will a new SAP Ariba and IBM collaboration be the function’s force for good?

Last week, tech giants IBM and SAP Ariba made the announcement that they would be joining forces to transform the future of procurement.

Together, the two will launch a hub for delivering cognitive procurement solutions to redefine the source-to-settle process. Additionally, the companies will launch a Cognitive Procurement hub to further the development of intelligent procurement solutions and services.

SAP Leonardo, IBM Watson and SAP Ariba will be used to pool together intelligence from procurement data and predictive insights from unstructured information.

Procurement, according to IBM, is about to get smarter, faster and more efficient.

“Today marks a major milestone for procurement,” said Alex Atzberger, President, SAP Ariba. “With the deep horizontal integration capabilities native within SAP Ariba’s mature platform and the innovative capabilities of SAP Leonardo and IBM Watson delivered by the industry’s most experienced and trusted providers, companies can realise an even more intelligent source-to-settle process for managing all categories of spend that creates value across the entire business.”

What does the future hold for IBM & SAP Ariba?

IBM Watson represents a new era in computing called cognitive computing, where systems understand the world in a way more similar to humans: through senses, learning, and experience. Watson solutions are currently being built, used and deployed in more than 45 countries and across 20 different industries.

On the SAP Ariba Network, buyers and suppliers from more than 2.5 million companies and 190 countries can discover new opportunities, collaborate on transactions and grow their relationships.

By partnering, SAP Ariba and IBM will use their data insights to increase procurement efficiency and intelligence, as well as improving spend visibility.

“We’ve built a cognitive procurement platform trained specifically to understand procurement transactions and unstructured data such as weather, non-standard part numbers in contracts and complex pricing structures,” said Jesus Mantas, General Manager, Cognitive Process Transformation, IBM Global Business Services. “By combining the power of IBM Watson on the IBM Cloud with SAP Ariba, we are leaping existing procurement benchmarks and delivering unprecedented value to our joint clients.”

Watch below to hear Jesus Mantas and Alex Atzberger discuss the partnership in more detail:

What’s the media saying?

IBM Emptoris customers are sure to be questioning what this announcement means for them. Part of the deal includes IBM gradually retiring Emptoris products over a multiyear timeline and encouraging its customers to migrate to SAP Ariba.

As Jason Busch points out on Spend Matters “it is clear that the partnership provides significant time for current IBM Emptoris customers to fully evaluate all of their options, including the potential to transition to SAP Ariba or to select other providers.”

An IBM spokesperson, speaking to The Register, commented that “we are encouraging Emptoris clients to transition to SAP Ariba. We will work closely with them providing support and transition services. Clients can continue to use Emptoris.”

Duncan Jones, Vice President, Principal Analyst at Forrester Research questioned the details of the announcement. He wrote, “the press release does not say when the collaboration will deliver anything that customers can actually implement. SAP has a long history of premature announcements and releases, so I’ll wait to see actual software being used by real customers before I get excited about this initiative.”

What do you think about SAP Ariba and IBMs’ partnership? Is it something to be excited about or are you, like Duncan Jones, a little skeptical? Let us know in the comments below.

In other procurement news this week…

The Future Belongs to AI

19-year-old world champion Ke Jie upon commented that the “future belongs to AI” after losing a game of ‘Go’ to Google’s AlphaGo robot

Go is an incredibly complex Chinese board game whose conquering by computers is seen as kind of a holy grail, and was not expected to be possible for another decade

The AlphaGo robot “learned” by speeding through the equivalent of playing 80 years straight to develop its technique and strategy

A robot that can learn from experience to handle new situations can tackle any problem a human could

Kroll’s analysis of National Crime Agency data found there were 1,575 referrals for labour exploitation in 2016

70 per cent of these (1,107) were adults and 30 per cent (468) were minors

Kroll said the increased numbers cast a spotlight on an issue that is of increasing concern to businesses, particularly in sectors such as retail and manufacturing

Under the Modern Slavery Act 2015 businesses with an annual turnover of £36m or more must make public the steps they are taking to ensure modern slavery is not taking place in their business or supply chain